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Carriage fees

Is there a table of cable network costs per subscriber? We all read about carriage disputes, but it would be nice to see the costs layed out where it's easy to see what each one values itself at, compared to others.

Do these costs for each channel per sub vary by provider (D*, E*, etc.)?

They are industry averages. Some pay more, some less. Contracts are typically tiered where the price per sub goes up annually. That's why we get price hikes each year. It also means it's less likey that one provider is paying the exact same rate as someone else at any given time since people are at different stages of their current contracts.

Because the channel was supposed to launch last year, it's a complete revamp of Discovery Health, and at the time they have yet to announce more than 3 shows that were going to air on it. Most providers rather just continue to pay what the terms on their Discovery Health contracts are and wait until that contract is finished so they see how it performs before they negotiate a price increase. (Not to mention Discovery and Harpo were also constantly renegotiating the ammount they had to invest in the channel over the past 2 years)

As for the costs they're averages, not only is it different depending on the stage of their contract, some of them get discounts if they agree to carry more of their channels at a bulk rate instead of individually.

I did not realize they were that high. Why was everyone flipping about OWN asking for .21?

In a word? Ratings. Ratings largely = revenue, and in more ways than one.

Discovery Health's fee was $.07. Oprah wants TRIPLE that price or more, but only has contracts for 3 shows. That means it's likely much of the schedule will be filled with "paid programming" (read: infomercials) that have zero ratings. Even if Oprah herself has 5 1-hour shows per week, that's a drop in the bucket compared to a week of 24-hour days. So she's asking to be paid 300-500% more than Discovery Health with a mostly-empty schedule. See the problem?

And while Oprah had good ratings on a broadcast network, that doesn't necessarily mean she'll keep those ratings on a cable network. And her old broadcast network will surely try to put something juicy in her old slot to draw ratings away from her, as will her old competitors.

I did not realize they were that high. Why was everyone flipping about OWN asking for .21?

Well, let's assume the old rate is $0.03 to $0.07 for that network (based solely on the article linked below...not saying what they are reportnig is accurate, but let's pretend) and now it goes up anywhere from 3X to 7X, that adds up to a lot of money a MSO has to pay out....millions and millions. You add those increases with retrans increases, increases from other programmers each year and you can see where a $3 to $4 increase happens each year (and sometimes that's not enough to cover the cost increases)